Treating any random act of indiscretion as seditious has no place in a democracy.
The propensity of elected governments to trample on men or women has been normalized to an absurd quantity. In the contemporary weather of high-pitched nationalism, obvious violations of basic rights are being disregarded as recurring. Yet every other case in point is the arrest and extended detention of Imphal-based journalist Kishorechandra Wangkhem under the draconian sedition regulation and National Security Act (NSA) for criticizing the Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh as a “puppet” of Hindutva and the use of allegedly “obscene” language against the CM and the Prime Minister.
The journalist was booked under Section 124A of the IPC concerning sedition and, sooner or later, under the NSA. He was sacked from the local TV channel that he worked for and spent months in jail, where he fell critically ill. The Manipur High Court has ordered his release. Such excesses have emerged as commonplace. To take the latest example, former JNU scholar union president Kanhaiya Kumar, the candidate for the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Bihar’s Begusarai, deals with charges of sedition for being a part of the students’ meeting that allegedly chanted seditious slogans.
The regulation on sedition has an egregious history. It is going back to the change in the Indian Penal Code for the duration of the British era to increase the ambit of Section 124A, considering the iconic trial of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Defending the change, member-in-rate of the Bill (Mr. Chalmers) said: “Language can be tolerated in England which it is dangerous to tolerate in India because in India it’s far apt to be transformed into action as opposed to passing off as harmless gas.” Since then, sedition has been outlawed within the UK. However, it is typically used here. It is staunchly defended by using the ruling BJP, which has termed the Congress’s manifesto promise of repealing Section 124A as an attempt to endanger national protection. What happened as “gasoline” within the extra evolved part of the world a century ago remains seditious and dangerous in today’s India.
In the Constitution and the Constituent Assembly debates, a majority of the contributors had resisted the inclusion of the term “sedition” in the exceptions in Article 19(2) to the liberty of speech and expression, assured below Article 19(1)(a). While the Supreme Court has, in the Kedar Nath Singh case of 1962, upheld the Constitutional validity of 124A, it has seriously restrained its application. However, considering this law is open to misuse, it should not have an area in the rulebook. Apart from sedition, defamation must be treated as a civil, as opposed to a crook offense. The State needs to be made to compensate for incorrect convictions. In the Malleshwaram bomb blast case of April 2013, Bengaluru police released three accused after failing to show costs. The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission had sought reimbursement from the State for wrongful incarceration, setting a precedent for State responsibility.
